This paper begins by presenting a simple model of the way in which experts estimate probabilities. The model is then used to construct a likelihood-based aggregation formula for combining multiple probability forecasts. The resulting aggregator has a simple analytical form that depends on a single, easily-interpretable parameter. This makes it computationally simple, attractive for further development, and robust against overfitting. Based on a large-scale dataset in which over 1300 experts tried to predict 69 geopolitical events, our aggregator is found to be superior to several widely-used aggregation algorithms.

This experiment explored the joint effects of the severity of the unintended consequences of norm violations and the strength of external pressure to violate norms on attributions of responsibility in two cultures. Americans and Singaporeans both responded to more severe consequences with escalating internal attributions and individual punishment, and both made more external attributions in response to growing peer pressure to violate norms. However, the two cultures had diverging reactions to mounting peer pressure as an excuse. Americans assigned less blame to individuals, whereas Singaporeans held firm on individual culpability while extending more blame to the peer group. The results clarify how blame-attenuating attributions in one society can be blame-expanding in another.

Four experiments explored whether 2 uniquely human characteristics—counterfactual thinking (imagining alternatives to the past) and the fundamental drive to create meaning in life—are causally related. Rather than implying a random quality to life, the authors hypothesized and found that counterfactual thinking heightens the meaningfulness of key life experiences. Reflecting on alternative pathways to pivotal turning points even produced greater meaning than directly reflecting on the meaning of the event itself. Fate perceptions (“it was meant to be”) and benefit-finding (recognition of positive consequences) were identified as independent causal links between counterfactual thinking and the construction of meaning. Through counterfactual reflection, the upsides to reality are identified, a belief in fate emerges, and ultimately more meaning is derived from important life events.

The positions that experts take on whether organizations do enough to ensure equal-opportunity hinge on the assumptions they make about the potency of prejudice. Prominent scholars have challenged the conventional notion that anti-discrimination norms, backed by legal sanctions, can check implicit bias. The strongest form of this argument is that it is impossible to achieve equal opportunity in any society with inequality of result—impossible because objective inequalities inevitably stamp into our minds subjective associations that inevitably contaminate personnel judgments that require the exercise of discretion. We discuss numerous problems with this argument (and the related argument that radical changes to anti-discrimination law are in order) but concede that the debate over what steps, short of quotas, can check implicit prejudice is not resolvable given the paucity of data that clashing camps jointly treat as probative. To avoid a protracted stalemate, we urge adversarial collaborations in which the debaters agree, ex ante, on research designs with the potential to induce both sides to change their minds.

The authors reanalyzed data from 2 influential studies--A. R. McConnell and I. M. Leibold (2001) and J. C. Ziegert and P. J. Hanges (2005)---that explore links between implicit bias and discriminatory behavior and that have been invoked to support strong claims about the predictive validity of the Implicit Association Test. In both of these studies, the inclusion of race Implicit Association Test scores in regression models reduced prediction errors by only tiny amounts, and Implicit Association Test scores did not permit prediction of individual-level behaviors. Furthermore, the results were not robust when the impact of rater reliability, statistical specifications, and/or outliers were taken into account, and reanalysis of A. R. McConnell & J. M. Leibold (2001) revealed a pattern of behavior consistent with a pro-Black behavioral bias. rather than the anti-Black bias suggested in the original study.

People are being exposed to second cultures in growing numbers, yet the role played by second-culture exposure in shaping sociocognitive skills has received little theoretical attention. The authors address this gap by exploring the relationship between acculturation strategies and integrative complexity. Consistent with the acculturation complexity model, studies of both Asian American college students (Study 1) and Israelis working in the United States (Study 2) show that biculturals are more integratively complex across domains (e.g., culture, work) than either assimilated or separated individuals. Using priming manipulations to clarify the directional flow of causality between acculturation and integrative complexity, the authors also find that greater integrative complexity among biculturals is driven by acculturation pressures (Study 3). Finally, the authors discuss the adaptive implications of multiculturalism.

Psychological social psychologists have devoted great effort to measuring the elusive construct of unconscious prejudice. However, recent work underscores both the psychometric flaws of these measures and the weaknesses in claims that they predict behavior in realistic organizational settings. Before accepting unconscious prejudice as an inevitable source of individual-level disparate treatment and endorsing structural solutions such as quotas, sociological social psychologists need to explore the relative efficacy of institutional norms and accountability systems widely used for checking both conscious and unconscious forms of individual-level bias.

The article, written in response to another article in the issue, addresses stereotypes in the workplace and examines how such stereotyping creates workplace discrimination. The authors propose that social psychological studies on stereotypes are potentially irrelevant for work settings. Also suggested by the authors are adversarial collaborations designed by laboratory researchers and social contextualists. Other topics include ways to avoid the negative effects of under- and overcorrection of bias in organizations

These questions resist precise answers because 'isms' don't obey the norms of classical logic (notwithstanding the occasional efforts of thought police to lay out well-defined necessary and sufficient conditions for category inclusion and exclusion). 'Isms' are best viewed as fuzzy sets with porous, shifting boundaries - and as organized around prototypes.

A series of financial scandals revealed a key weakness in the American business model: the failure of the U.S. auditing system to deliver true independence. We offer a two-tiered analysis of what went wrong. At the more micro tier, we advance moral seduction theory, explaining why professionals are often unaware of how morally compromised they have become by conflicts of interest. At the more macro tier, we offer issue-cycle theory, explaining why conflicts of interest of the sort that compromise major accounting firms are so pervasive.